Bohemians
were poor and proud of it. Attempting to support themselves by
art alone or having to pay their tuition fees at the University,
many had little money left to pay their rent, buy food, or keep
themselves warm. Sometimes this poverty was considered amusing
by the bohemians (many of whom came from bourgeois homes and
expected to return to such a lifestyle later), but it could also
be dangerous, even life-threatening.

Borrowing money was a constant part of
life. "They [Bohemians] cannot take ten steps on the Boulevard
without meeting a friend, and thirty, no matter where, without
encountering a creditor," wrote Henry Murger in the preface
to Scenes de la Vie de Boheme. When
leaving his house on the 15th of the month, a common day for
receiving bills, Murger's character Rodolphe remarked "Today
the streets are paved with creditors" (118). Many frequented
pawn shops when they needed some quick money. One contemporary
of Murger had to wear a Turkish costume for several days because
he had pawned his own clothes in order to borrow the costume
to attend a ball.

Marius,
from Les Miserables, fell
into poverty when he left home after renouncing his grandfather's
bourgeois values. This engraving is titled "The Excellence
of Misfortune," suggesting that Marius took pride in his
situation.

When one character in George du Maurier's
novel Trilby got into extensive
debt,

"then would Anthony hie
him to some beggarly attic in some lost Parisian slum and write
his own epitaph in lovely French or German verse ... and telling
himself he was forsaken by friends, family, and mistress alike,
look out of his casement over the Paris chimney-pots for the
last time, and liston once more to 'the harmonies of nature'
...and bewail 'the cruel deceptions of his life,' and finally
lay himself down to die of sheer starvation ... Fainter and fainter
would he grow, and finally, on the third day or thereabouts,
a remittance would reach him from some long-suffering sister
or aunt in far Lausanne; or else the fickle mistress or faithless
friend (who had been looking for him all over Paris) would discover
his hiding-place ... and then vogue
la galere! and back again to Bohemia, dear Bohemia and all
its joys, as long as the money lasted . . . e poi, da capo!"
(92-3)

At times, however, the consequences of
poverty were not so humorous. Another friend of Murger ate nothing
but raw potatoes for one week, without salt, because he had no
way to cook them. Another had no real shirt for the entire winter
of 1838, which was unusually cold. He wore only a blue cotton
blouse; one night he was left homeless and, after walking for
hours, fell unconscious into the snow.

Such conditions caused despair. In 1843,
Murger himself wrote, "We are starving. We've reached the
end of our tether. Without question, we shall have to blow our
brains out if we can't find a niche somewhere."